Five Hundred Years Ago
After leaving Ruby in the hunting cabin, Alexander went back to the place they had been ambushed by the werewolves.
He found the werewolves gone, but he caught up to the tribesmen. He couldn’t let them go. He didn’t intend on staying at the tribe anymore, but it didn’t matter.
Every human who knew his true nature had to go. They also had to pay for putting Ruby in danger.
As their screams rendered the air as he worked through them, he thought about Ruby’s face a few moments ago. She would hate him even more when she knew he had gone after them. If she could hate him any more than she already did. He had murdered her father.
He knew she would have sunk that dagger into his heart if he had stayed for a second longer.
He had just dropped the drained body of the acting chief to the ground when a huge black wolf rushed onto the scene.
He waited for more, but none showed up. The wolf poised ready to attack.
“Where is she?” the werewolf’s voice reached his mind.
It was the werewolf. Her werewolf.
“You are still alive,” he commented. She would be happy to know that.
The werewolf got closer. Unlike others who had tried to corner him before, Alexander didn’t sense any fear in this one. But then again, he was an Alpha.
When they had first met, Alexander had tried getting into his mind. He had hit a barrier. He had only managed to influence him once he was poisoned.
He was strong, but it wasn’t just about him being an Alpha. Only a werewolf who was a pureblood descendant of the original werewolves made by the Moon Goddess could have such strong defence against an original vampire like him.
He would have to be a couple more hundred years older to subdue a werewolf like him with the same tricks that worked on everyone else.
“I asked where she is.”
“She is safe,” he replied.
“With you,” the werewolf deadpanned.
Fair enough.
“Too bad I promised her not to hurt you,” he said. He would love to have a go at him. Find out exactly how strong he was. It was rare to come across a werewolf of his calibre, someone who could actually prove to be a challenge. “If you really want to protect her, worry about your priestess. Have you heard? She intends to sacrifice her.”
“What?”
“Tell me about it. Since when did werewolves sacrifice humans?”
“Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t get into her head.” Werewolf priestesses had all sorts of talismans and amulets that protected them from vampire influence. “She claims that the Goddess demands a sacrifice if your kind were to help the tribe again.”
“That’s bullshit.” Eric wanted to make the vampire pay for everything he had done, but he also had to make sure the priestess didn’t get her way. A human sacrifice? It was unheard of! Was she doing this to take revenge for what the tribesmen had done? “I’ll be back for you,” he promised the vampire. Once he stopped the priestess and ensured Ruby was safe, he would look for him.
“I’ll wait,” Alexander said.
By the time Eric got to the shrine, it was too late.
Blood froze in his veins as he took in the scene at the altar. Ruby lay on it, wearing a white chemise, her wrists and ankles fastened to pegs on each corner of the altar. Blood streamed from four cuts, one on each limb, and filled the indented ring around the altar.
He screamed her name as he shot forward, but a priestess stepped in his path and stopped him. “If you interrupt the process, her soul will be scattered and she will never be reborn.”
He pushed her aside and rushed to the altar. On the other side was the High Priestess, sitting on the ground with her eyes closed and mumbling incantations.
When he reached for Ruby, his hand came up against an invisible barrier. He turned to the High Priestess. “Stop it right now! The Goddess does not accept human sacrifices.”
He looked back at Ruby. Her face was pale. She had already lost a lot of blood. Her body was still, as if she was not breathing.
Was he too late?
He threw himself at the altar, but the barrier kept him out once again.
So he rushed at the High Priestess. Something wrapped around his feet and he stumbled to the ground. He checked his legs as a stinging pain burned through him. The other priestess had wrapped a silver chain around his legs.
“Why are you doing this?” he demanded, hissing through the pain. “She did not kill any of us. She saved my life!”
A gust of wind blew through the shrine as Alexander materialised out of nowhere. The priestess gasped as he made it to the altar in a blink. But like Eric, he could not get past the barrier.
He turned to the High Priestess.
“If you stop her, the princess will be gone forever,” the priestess yelled. “I’m not lying. Look into my mind.”
Alexander looked at her. He pried into her mind. She was not lying. If he stopped the High Priestess, Ruby would not just die. She would also lose her soul, never to be born again.
“I’ll turn her,” he said.
“No!” Eric roared. He turned to the priestess. “Release me!”
Now that there was a vampire in the picture, she did not hesitate. Eric groaned as he got to his feet, his ankles burning from the silver.
“She offered herself,” the priestess said. “No one forced her.” She looked at Alexander. “She is willing to give up her life if it’s what it takes to get rid of you.”
Alexander looked at Ruby. Her heartbeat was so faint. She would be gone any second now. If he took her with him…
She would hate him even more than she did now. How could he turn her into the creature whose death she wanted so badly?
It was too late.
He had lost her even before he had her.
Maybe if he had gone back to the hunting cabin right away after getting rid of her uncle and his men, he could have stopped her. Told her it was all bullshit. Told her he would leave her people, that he’d not cause any more deaths. That there was no need to sacrifice her life.
Instead, he had gone hunting for the werewolves who had ambushed them. Had it been worth it?
“It’s over, vampire,” the High Priestess said as she broke her trance and rose from her position.
Wolves rushed into the shrine and surrounded him.
His eyes remained on Ruby.
The faint heartbeat was gone.
In the end, he could not save her. And he could not take her with him.
He had killed her father! Dozens of her people. Even if things hadn’t turned out like this and he could stay, she wouldn’t have been safe around him.
That night, when he had been fantasising about how good it would be to live like a human by her side, an uncontrollable bloodlust had struck him after she went back inside.
He still could not tell what happened after, but when he came back to his senses, he was in the library, her father’s drained body behind the desk.
He knew it was the Maker’s doing. To remind him what he was and how he should live.
It could have been her.
He should have left then. Now, he was the reason she was dead.
He would forget about her.
He had thousands of years ahead of him. Soon enough, the memory of her would be a speck, and then nothing.
Maybe he would laugh about it some day. It was inconceivable for a creature of the dark to be entangled with such fleeting human cares.
Maybe he would wish he had tasted her blood instead of craving her warmth, her smile, her laugh.
And if he didn’t, if he didn’t forget about her, and if he didn’t think of all of this as a laughable moment in his long life…
He would give anything to see her again.
He didn’t deserve to.
She would kill him in her next life if she had memories of this one.
Regardless, he wanted to see her again when she was reborn. Then, he could make up for everything.
If he still cared.